Reigning world champions Mercedes encountered no major problems in the first week of pre-season testing, according to pace-setter Valtteri Bottas.
[f1tv2020testa]”It’s been a good feeling,” he said after completing his running on Friday. “No massive balance issues with the car or things with the behaviour. It’s been pretty good. I feel we’ve made good improvement every day with the car even though there was no massive problems.
“There’s always things you’re fine-tuning with the balance: Balance through different speeds and types of corners. We’ve been getting that better and better, more towards where it should be. At end of [Friday] morning was already pretty decent feeling. Some small issues here and there like [Thursday] but that’s kind of part of testing and debugging a bit. In general, it’s been quite good.”
The team ended the test 1.3 seconds faster than any of their rivals and completed more laps than anyone else. However Bottas suspects the team will face the strongest competition from the same two teams as last year.
“It’s way too early to say any kind of ranking of the teams. Obviously last year it was pretty clear which teams were the top three teams. It was us, Ferrari and Red Bull and with not many big regulation changes on paper I think these three teams they are the favourites.
“But you never know what other teams could have found over the winter. So way too early to draw any conclusions on that.”
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2020 F1 season
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knightameer (@knightameer)
25th February 2020, 8:50
Mercedes this year seem to be the exact opposite of last year. Bullish instead of ‘sandbagging’. Declaring that there are no issues instead of complaining even when fastest. This does not bode well for the championship, although it’s cool that Mercedes literally dominated a certain era. Ending this era as they started is truly amazing.
grat
25th February 2020, 18:29
They weren’t sandbagging last year– they just took a bit longer to suss out the W10 and it’s quirks.
It helped that Ferrari was using a magic 8-ball for their strategy calls, but no, Mercedes actually thought they were on the back foot.
The real way to tell is how many of the team are smiling during testing– Last year, not too many smiles at Mercedes. This year, LOTS of smiles– in fact, I’m not sure they’ve been this happy since 2014.
One thing that hadn’t occurred to me with DAS is that Mercedes can now use a much more aggressive toe angle to get better cornering grip, as it won’t be a handicap on the straights.
Adrian
25th February 2020, 10:55
Failed engine is a small issue :)